A severe pandemic would harm health, economies, and communities in all countries, but especially in poor and fragile states. Pandemic prevention requires robust public health systems (veterinary and human) that collaborate to stop contagion promptly.
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This study aims to build on the findings
from the previously mentioned studies, and seeks to provide
more detailed information on the costs of the various
functions... Show More + and categories of expenditure involved in the
establishment and operation of system for the prevention and
control of emerging zoonotic diseases at country and global
level. It will also seek to provide information on
efficiency and effectiveness gains that will result from the
introduction of a One Health approach. With these aims, the
study has two target audiences: (a) project planners, who
will benefit from the information of the costs of setting up
surveillance and control systems to be used as benchmarks
when planning preparedness and control operations; and (b)
policy planners at the decision-making level, who would use
the information on the efficiency and effectiveness gains to
guide them in the decision-making process regarding the
eventual introduction of One Health. This report
disaggregates costs by task, making explicit those
activities that are critical for effectiveness and
identifying scope for efficiencies. The analysis draws on a
range of data sources and earlier work, including integrated
national action plans for, and World Bank staff appraisal
reports on, avian and pandemic influenzas responses, a
survey of the directors of wildlife services, assessments of
veterinary systems in developing countries, and OIE (Office
International des Epizooties - World Organization for Animal
Health) analyses of disease prevention systems. Show Less -

Whether living in urban or rural
environments, humans tend to perceive the world around them
as being shaped by culture and industry more than by natural
history. H... Show More +umans, however, are part of a biological continuum
that covers all living species. Charles Darwin's 200th
birthday in 2009 could serve to remind us of this. All
animals, including humans but also plants, fungi, and
bacteria, share the same basic biochemical principles of
metabolism, reproduction, and development. Most pathogens
can infect more than one host species, including humans. In
1964, veterinary epidemiologist Calvin Schwabe coined the
term "one medicine" to capture the
interrelatedness between animal and human health, and the
medical realities of preventing and controlling zoonotic
diseases or "zoonoses" -diseases that are
communicable between animals and humans. One medicine
signaled the recognition of the risks that zoonotic diseases
pose to people, their food supplies, and their economies.
Given the interrelatedness of human, animal, and ecosystem
health, the rationale for some form of coordinated policy
and action among agencies responsible for public health,
medical science, and veterinary services is quite intuitive.
Later, the term "one health" came into use, and
later still, the broader concept of "one world one
health," which is today used to represent the
inextricable links among human and animal health and the
health of the ecosystems they inhabit. Show Less -